The present invention relates to a determination apparatus and to a determination method. For example, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for making a determination about performing a dynamic program update on an embedded device.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of embedded devices that are embedded in in-vehicle equipment and industrial equipment. Under such circumstances, a method for performing a so-called OTA (Over The Air) update on a program in such an embedded device is demanded. Various program update technologies are proposed.
A technology disclosed, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-218334 dynamically updates a program on an individual module basis without stopping the operation of the program running on an embedded device by pre-assigning a base address and a relative address to each module of an update program.
A method disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2015-32314 is an OS (Operating System) replacement method. In a currently executed OS, this method is exercised to make preparations for loading a new OS and store information to be delivered to the new OS at its startup. Subsequently, restarting the currently executed OS loads the new OS and makes preparations for delivering the information to the new OS at its startup. Eventually, restarting the new OS achieves OS replacement.
A method disclosed in Masatomo Hashimoto, A Method of Safety Analysis for Runtime Code Update, In Proc. of ASIAN, LNCS 4435, pp. 60-74, 2007 identifies code eliminations and insertions to be made by an update, makes analyses to determine the influence of the code eliminations and insertions upon a program control flow and a data flow, identifies a program portion uninfluenced by changes, regards the identified program portion as a changeable program point, and performs a program update during an operation.